Newman wrote about "the idea of a university" at a time when the universities of Europe had been largely secularized. This is certainly the case in America today. American Catholic colleges and universities today are largely built on unsustainable economic models; they are too costly for most to attend without either exorbitant loans or significant strains on family resources; and, sadly, too many of them have sacrificed their Catholic missions and identities in efforts to sustain enrollments.

Collegium sanctorum angelorum has been born to change all of this. The Collegium is a residential, four-year college providing a liberal arts education (A.A. and B.A.) that is faithful to the intellectual, moral, spiritual, and liturgical traditions of the Roman Catholic Church, and a formation in Catholic living – ore et labore, both at affordable rates (under $13,500) for tuition, room and board. It is a traditional college serving traditional Catholics. (It is the only such college offering a four-year degree since the demise of Fisher More College.)

The Collegium is also as concerned about formation as it is about information. Thus, the residential aspect of the college is critical. The residential aspect of the college will constitute a program of prayer, centered on the traditional Latin Mass and parts of the Divine Office, work, study, and co-curricular activities that will support intellectual inquiry, spiritual formation, and moral discernment. The formation will be essentially contemplative in nature, to which the traditional forms of prayer are more naturally aligned. (This will also serve the needs of traditional Catholics, for whom there is currently no four-year college devoted to such a traditionally oriented formation.)

The college will keep its costs affordable by limiting the size and scope of the program (120 students maximum – 30 students per year), by supporting the program with auxiliary income-producing enterprises, and by using technology to reduce the cost of the delivery of educational content.

In the few months of our short existence we have met with some enthusiastic support, some disbelief, some resistance, and with a few of the many ways that the devil will engage us to thwart our efforts to fulfill our mission. Even this, however, gives us encouragement: if our mission did not threaten the devil's grip on American culture - including in some ways the Church - he would not bother with us.

Our website gives more detail about who we are and about our plans. We invite you to visit the site at www.collegiumsanctorumangelorum.org and sign up our newsletter so that you can keep up to date with our progress.